Radio Telescopes Turned Into Powerful Space Debris Scanners

A world-first demonstration repurposes the iconic Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank to detect objects in geostationary orbit — 37,000 km above Earth.

There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris orbiting Earth, from defunct satellites to fragments of old rocket stages. At geostationary orbit (GEO), where the world's most valuable communications, navigation, and weather satellites reside, tracking these objects requires exceptionally powerful radar. The University of Birmingham-led Long Baseline Multistatic Radar (LBMR) project has now demonstrated that existing radio telescopes can be repurposed as highly sensitive receivers, boosting detection capability more than tenfold without building new infrastructure.

How It Works

Traditional radar systems can reliably track objects in low Earth orbit, but GEO lies roughly 37,000 kilometers away — ten times farther. Detecting objects at that distance normally requires extremely powerful transmitters. The LBMR approach takes a different route: it uses radio telescopes, originally built for astronomy, as independent bistatic radar receivers. When paired with existing radar transmitters, the immense dish surface area of instruments like the 76-meter Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank captures far more reflected signal than conventional radar antennas, dramatically increasing sensitivity.

Three Key Facts

• Tenfold sensitivity gain: Incorporating radio telescopes into existing radar systems increases sensitivity more than ten times, enabling the detection of smaller objects at greater distances than previously possible with conventional space surveillance radar.
• Multi-site network: The demonstration used the Lovell Telescope, the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope network, and a 30-meter Goonhilly Earth Station antenna, showing how scientific and commercial infrastructure can be networked for space security.
• Real-time demonstration: The team delivered live radar detections at the European Space Agency's ECSAT facility in Oxfordshire, with representatives from government, defense, and industry observing objects being tracked in real time.

Why This Matters

GEO hosts many of the world's most critical space assets — military communications, weather monitoring, GPS augmentation, and international television broadcast satellites. As the orbital environment becomes increasingly congested, the ability to detect, track, and identify all objects in this region — whether functioning satellites, inactive spacecraft, or debris — is essential for protecting infrastructure and avoiding collisions. The LBMR project, funded by the UK Space Agency and involving partners from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Australia's CSIRO, and Goonhilly Earth Station, demonstrates that repurposing existing scientific infrastructure can address emerging national security and space sustainability challenges without the enormous cost of building dedicated new radar systems.